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Art Works

A collection of poems written while sitting with different works of art.  The title of the work of art is usually included at the bottom of the piece.

Dance to the Heartbeat

The rhythm, it haunts us, unsettles our dreams

Strangles our hopeful inelegant structure

Out of the cellophane, into the stream.

 

The passion of this and all that surrounds us

Within us, between us, I say that I am.

I am and we are, but the rhythm confounds us,

 

With nothing to hope for, nothing to bind

Scatter the ashes that once were our plans     

Dance to the heartbeat we can’t leave behind.

 

The one-legged don’t always speak

Fernando Alvim

Denver Art Museum

Don't Be So Certain

The dance is unfolding

Laughter restores

Music emerging and

Merging with words,

 

Opening longing,

Welcoming in,

Turning to notice

Before it all ends

 

I said, “Don’t be so certain.”

 

The depth of the joy and the play is all here

Exquisitely focused where nothing is clear.

 

  

Dihedral Barrage

Kristen Baker

​

Denver Art Museum

This Fire In Which I Swim

This fire in my heart, I do not give to you

Nourishing the flame,

this spark only here a short time

A halo, a lover’s embrace

 

I am not dancing your dance,

mine will unfold itself,

scrambled fire, lost in creation,

I would not, could not choose

this sea of fire in which I swim.

 

Pennington 1/ Pelham II

Ethel Schwabacker

 Denver Art Museum

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Who Would Complain

It’s only because we’re alive,

unavoidably touching, inexplicably weeping,

and unable to speak.

 

The train fading into the mist,

Leaving us inexplicably, unavoidably

standing in the drizzle,

warmed by the fire that flows through us,

by a pulse of imagination

 

Who would complain?

 

Hudson River Day Line

Joan Mitchell

​

Denver Art Museum 

I Do Not Know What Moves

Emerging, I might have wings.

The rain soaked loamy soil falling away and drifting downward.

Reaching towards obvious, bursting forth, unsure of the way,

Wandering delusions or essential exploration

I do not know what moves my head.

 

Jacob’s Ladder

Helen Frankenfurter

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Denver Art Museum 

Road Map

The roadmap is twisted and tattered

The signs, they all point the wrong way.

The space is surrounded, divided, and bounded,

Confounded by visions of far, far away.

 

The sinuous line to the distant horizon

Tangled and twisted and groping within.

The dirt and the garbage, the neon-lit carnage,

Chewing on days that have yet to begin.

 

Adrift with a dream and a highway to follow,

Everyday here as the traffic unwinds.

Turning the exits in circles and yearning

To follow this road to the end of the line.

 

The white line is beckoning, urging us onward,

Confining the journey, directing the car

Enticing confusion, seductive intrusion

Insisting we never should be where we are.

 

 

R.A.W.

Nicola Lopez

Denver Art Museum 

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